This report presents measurements performed between four European high performance computing (HPC) centers to investigate the possibilities and challenges of European Meta Computing using broad-band connections. A high speed, low latency pilot network consisting of Ethernet, FDDI, Datex-M and A sections was set up between workstation clusters at the computing centers.

The dynamic load balancing environment HiCon [Beck95e] was installed on the clusters and several complex, parallelized applications - image recognition, finite element analysis and database processing - were executed and observed. Additionally, several of these applications where executed concurrently in the system. The load balancing environment matched the trade-of between resource exploitation and communication overhead according to the system and network behavior. Performance was compared to the nowadays available Internet connection.

The trials were supported by the European Commission among a set of different distributed computing trials within the E=MC2 project [Horn94], [EMC95c]. The results strengthen common promising expectations and show several interesting challenges, limitations and guidelines for European Meta Computing - resource sharing between distant high performance computing centers by high speed networks and flexible load distribution services.